In the coming weeks, I’ll be making a couple of presentations on developing two rather different types of mobile application development, for two rather different mobile platforms, for two rather different audiences programming in two rather different languages…

The “relaxation tape” came into being when the first personal music players — this was when cassette tapes were the most popular medium for playing music — became popular. These were recordings that featured soothing music and a narrator with a calming voice who would guide you through a relaxation or mindfulness exercise. As technology evolved, relaxation tapes became relaxation MP3s, and you can now find relaxation and mindfulness apps in the App Store, such as Take a Break (it’s free).

Tampa iOS Meetup is my Meetup group aimed at people new to software development or new to iOS development. Rather than study just a single aspect of iOS development, each Tampa iOS Meetup session is devoted to developing a complete app, and learning various things along the way.

GDG Sun Coast is Tampa Bay’s Google developer group, run by Mike Traverso and Scott Thisse, and devoted to all matters related to software development for Google’s platforms. Mike’s invited me to speak at April’s GDG Sun Coast Meetup, where I’ll walk the group through building FaceSpotter, an Android app that adds cartoon-like features to people’s faces in real-time, in the style of Snapchat’s “Lenses”.

In the talk, you’ll learn about:

Incorporating the Face API into your own Android apps

Programmatically identifying and tracking human faces from a camera feed and getting their location and size

Identifying points of interest, such as eyes, ears, nose, and mouth on tracked faces

Drawing augmented reality text and graphics over images from a camera feed

Join me and the rest of the GDG Sun Coasters on Wednesday, April 19th at 7:00 p.m. at Tampa Bay WaVE (500 East Kennedy Boulevard, 3rd floor, Tampa) for GDG Sun Coast’s session on building an augmented reality app! Bring your laptop, and be ready to code!